


not a word was spoken

by fuckitfireeverything



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-04
Updated: 2012-05-04
Packaged: 2017-11-04 20:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckitfireeverything/pseuds/fuckitfireeverything
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE AVENGERS MOVIE - DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE</p><p>“How many?” he repeats. “Ten? Twenty?”</p><p>Her face hardens in an effort not to respond, and he can tell from the look in her eyes that the question isn’t “how many,” but “who?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	not a word was spoken

Natasha won’t tell him how many agents he killed, directly or indirectly. This fact alone tells him it’s more than he can handle the guilt of. 

He can feel the head wound she gave him like the trance — an overwhelming haze, though at least this time he is in control of his limbs through the fog of the concussion, flexing his fingers over and over, a kind of calm reassurance in the familiarity of his own grip. Instead of the cold spreading through his chest and out into his extremities, he feels the warmth of Natasha’s reassuring hand on his arm. 

“How many?” he repeats.

She shakes her head, lips pressed into a thin, determined line. 

“Ten? Twenty?”

Her face hardens in an effort not to respond, and he can tell from the look in her eyes that the question isn’t “how many,” but “who?”

“Oh god,” he says, a rough half-voiced groan, imagining the worst case scenario. “Rogers?”

“No,” she says, and then looks at someone over his shoulder and bites her lip.

And there in the doorway is Rogers, scraped up but alive, and they exchange a few words, and Clint might be responding, he can’t tell, because all he can see is what’s crumpled in Rogers’ hand: a small piece of cardstock with a vintage picture on it, Rogers’ own face obscured by blood. 

Clint has seen that trading card before. He knows that trading card — intimately remembers running his fingers over the plastic covering in the binder he found in one of Phil’s drawers, sneering and laughing as Phil uncharacteristically stumbled over an explanation. 

(In a few hours Stark will give him that explanation, will recite the words Phil finally managed to articulate before his life was cut short defending them: _I still believe in heroes_.)

It was the first time he’d been to Phil’s apartment — hell, the first time he’d been allowed off base since joining SHIELD. He’d been seventeen and cynical and sick of microwave dinners, and as any good handler would Phil had offered to cook him a real meal in return for a debrief. Clint had quickly learned the difference between Agent Coulson and Phil. Agent Coulson who berated him for handing in reports late and Phil who cooked a mean lasagna. Agent Coulson who superglued the vents shut, and Phil who blushed at the mention of his trading card collection. 

The card in Rogers’ hand, he remembers, was the first one Phil had gotten. A gift from an uncle at his seventh birthday, Phil had told him a few weeks later. His favorite, if he had to choose. And Phil would spend their dinners, face broken into a hopeful smile, trying to explain that there are still people out there who risk their lives every day to make the world a better place. Good, noble people like Captain America who do what they do even though it’s never enough. Cops and firefighters and secret government agents just trying to keep people safe. Phil had carried this card in his pocket when he was Clint’s age, on his way to enlist to protect his country. If Captain America could do it, he always thought, it was the least he could do. 

The blood means Agent Coulson is dead. It means “declared on site” and “killed in action” and “forms to fill out.” It means the fact that Clint couldn’t resist the trance did more than negatively affect his performance as an agent of SHIELD. It means that Phil is dead too.

Because there’s a difference between Clint and Agent Barton as well, a difference between Clint and Hawkeye, and it’s Clint who bites the name _Phil_ into skin at night, Clint who wants nothing but to grab the card out of Rogers’ hand and wipe the blood away desperately, Clint who swallows the bile rising at the back of his throat, and Agent Barton who bites his tongue and swears to kill Loki himself, whatever the cost. 

So maybe, if Captain America can do it — this avenging they've been speaking of in the background — he can do it too. Maybe he responds to whatever Rogers is saying, because next thing he knows he’s filling the quiver on his back, holding his bow at the ready.

(And, “a cellist,” Phil had responded to questions of his personal life, a smile only for Clint hidden behind his straight face, and Pepper mistakes Clint’s snicker for judgement and shoots him a disapproving glare, but Clint just imagines how difficult it would be to play cello with this type of bow.)

**Author's Note:**

> for Arielle (why is all my Clint/Coulson fic for Arielle?)
> 
> my apologies if there are any factual errors, I've only seen the movie once


End file.
